Artificial Intelligence | April 28, 2024
WhatsApp will receive an image editor that will use Artificial Intelligence for functions such as changing the background of a photograph.
WhatsApp is widely used for group chats with friends, family, or even strangers, but also for sharing multimedia content such as images and videos. Everyone has sent a photo via WhatsApp to a contact, and soon this feature will be enhanced with the potential of AI.
WhatsApp will receive an integrated image editor that will allow us to edit photos before sending them to our contacts. The feature has been discovered in the latest beta version of WhatsApp, and it is expected to roll out to all users in the near future.
This investment in AI for photo editing is not surprising, as Meta, the owner of WhatsApp, has already implemented similar features on Instagram and Facebook. Now, these functions will come to WhatsApp along with other new features.
The novelty was discovered by TheSpAndroid, where they noticed that WhatsApp has received the same AI functions as the rest of Meta’s apps. Specifically, these are ‘Remodel’ (Restyle) and ‘Background’ (Backdrop); to these, a new function called ‘Expand’ has been added.
Starting with Restyle, this feature is capable of creating an image from a phrase or prompt, similar to what can be done with Dall-E and other generative AI models; in this case, this feature allows users to create new images from scratch that can be shared directly through WhatsApp chats and groups.
On the other hand, the second feature, Backdrop, is capable of removing the background from our photos; not only that, but it can also change the background to whatever we want. For example, we can ask it to place us in an office or on a beach, so it appears as if we are in those locations.
The new feature, which had not been seen in other Meta apps until now, is Expand; as its name suggests, it is capable of enlarging the size of our image using AI. This is achieved by generating more content on each side of the image, with AI ‘imagining’ what the space surrounding the original photograph would look like.
These three functions appear when we are about to share an image through a WhatsApp chat, in the editor that the app already has, allowing us to crop or add text and stickers to the image. However, for the time being, these functions do not work when we press these new buttons, indicating that WhatsApp has not yet finished implementing everything necessary.
